Sword and harp
Sword and Harp is a novel by the Irish writer Frank Delaney , which was published in 2004 under the original title Ireland: A Novel by Time Warner Verlag in London and in 2006 as a German translation by Droemer Knaur in Munich . The novel depicts the history and myths of Ireland in an episodic way , from the early days to the present, against the background of a mysterious family saga.
background
Delaney, who was born in Tipperary (Ireland), describes the eventful history of his home country in the novel. It tells of old myths and real events that were traditionally spread in earlier times through “ storytellers and bards ” in the country. In Ireland these narrators were referred to as “Seanchai”, which means “male historian” or “keeper of history and storyteller”, so it is not a storyteller . The idea for this novel at the breakfast table arose from a conversation between the author and his friend Ed Victor in London , during which they discussed the phenomenon of the Newgrange tomb. This is taken up in the opening story of this book.
Delaney sums up the resulting motivation in a short preface as follows:
“Beneath all the histories of Ireland, from the present day, through her long troubled relationship with England and back to the earliest times, there has always been another, less obvious reporter speaking - the oral tradition, Ireland's vernacular narrative, telling the country's tale to her people in stories handed down since God was a boy. This fireside voice took great care to say that imagination and emotion play their parts in every history and therefore, to understand the Irish, mere facts can never be enough; this is a country that reprocesses itself through the mills of its imagination. "
“In the history of Ireland, starting from today through the long, problematic relationship with England and back to the distant past, there has always been another, less clear voice in addition to the official spelling, namely the oral tradition. It is the great folk tale that has brought the story of their country closer to the Irish since God was a little boy. That voice by the fireplace has always insisted on allowing imagination and feeling to play their part in historical accounts, and therefore mere factual knowledge cannot be enough to understand Ireland and the Irish. "
Structure and content
The novel consists of a framework narrative that deals with Ronan O'Mara, who was nine at the beginning of the book, and numerous historical narratives integrated into this plot, which in themselves constitute an anthology of their own within the novel. The book consists of a dedication from the author to the American literary agent Ed Victor who led Delaney to write the novel, a brief preliminary note from the author, and 52 chapters. These chapters are partly introduced by initials ( 
) or a simple Celtic knot symbol ( 
) as a vignette and are mostly arranged chronologically. The sections that begin with the Celtic knot symbol usually play in the respective present. In the second half of the book, five longer chapters are given a heading. These sections of the novel reproduce documents and letters. The chapter Chronicle of a storyteller consists of the notes of the storyteller and deals with his origin, his wanderings, thoughts and fears. It is found in hiding by the young Ronan O'Mara. Another chapter, entitled The Wandering Journeyman and His Craft, is also a document from the narrator that he sent to the young Ronan and is a textbook on the craft of storytelling. Here Delaney lets his protagonists explain the tricks and staging that are important for a storyteller if he wants to captivate his audience. A kind of scientific work by Ronan O'Mara, now as a student, on the Penal Laws in Ireland, the English laws of oppression against Irish Catholics, forms the next documentary chapter. Another chapter of this kind consists of a letter from the storyteller to Ronan entitled Where My Soul Goes ; it is a kind of legacy for his successor. At the end of the story, the adult Ronan found the second part of the narrative chronicle in 1961 with the title Of Love and Truth , also in a hiding place. Many of the stories collected in this book allude with small swipes to the centuries-old conflict between the Irish and the English, which may appear humorous but always contain a serious element against the background of the history of Ireland.
In the winter of 1951, an old man comes to nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara's home. He is the last of a once honored class of storytellers who still continues the centuries-old tradition and knows how to captivate his listeners with old Irish stories about powerful kings or legendary saints and their deeds. But after three days the old storyteller is shown by the mother of nine-year-old Ronan. The old man had told them about events from the Irish folk, for example about the fictional builder of the Stone Age tombs of Newgrange, about the patron saint of the island of Patrick of Ireland , the discovery of America long before Christopher Columbus and under what circumstances poetry came to Ireland . Ronan is so fascinated by this man and his stories that he believes that he has also recognized his own destiny through it. He begins to deal with Irish history and the folk, studies history and since he also remembers this impressive incident as an adult, he finally begins to look for the storyteller himself. He succeeds in establishing indirect written contact with the old man, who remains anonymous until almost the end. Only at the end of the novel does it become clear why years ago Ronan's mother treated the old storyteller so negatively, the cause was a tragic family secret, which she feared would damage the reputation of the family in Catholic Ireland at that time. At the end of the book, the old storyteller is given the opportunity to perform in front of a large audience on the 50th anniversary of the Irish Easter Rising in 1916.
expenditure
- Frank Delaney: Ireland: A Novel . Time Warner, London 2004, ISBN 0-316-72597-8 .
- Frank Delaney: Ireland: A Novel . HarperCollins, New York 2005, ISBN 0-06-056348-6 .
- Frank Delaney: Sword and Harp - The Great Ireland Saga (= Knaur . No. 63165 ). Knaur Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-426-63165-2 (translated by Karin Diemerling).
Web links
- Works by Frank Delaney in the WorldCat bibliographic database
- Sword and harp on grimoires.de (review)
Individual evidence
- ^ Katie Moten: Ireland: A Novel by Frank Delaney. rte.ie, accessed on May 13, 2019 .
- ^ Karl Juergen Hepke: The culture of the island celts (8c) - legal system on tolos.de
- ^ Frank Delaney: Backgrounder on Ireland, A Novel. (No longer available online.) Frankdelaney.com, archived from the original on March 31, 2016 ; Retrieved June 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Book Summary: Ireland: A Novel by Frank Delaney on bookbrowse.com.
- ↑ Ireland by Frank Delaney. Goodreads, accessed May 27, 2015 (brief description and reviews).
- ↑ Frank Delaney: Sword and Harp. In: histo-couch.de. Retrieved May 27, 2015 .